Talk:New World War/@comment-44671220-20191216110102/@comment-44671220-20191217034248
A few things. 1. Ambush tactics has always been a viable tactic from past to present. Every single army does it - from the Romans to the Nords to the Germans in WW2 to the Chinese in the Korean War. It just means your dear Japanese commander sucked at recon and failed to establish his supply routes. It's not a thing stuck in the Medieval era. 2. The term you're looking for is assymetrical warfare. And the reason why conventional armies couldn't fully defeat the enemies in these wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya) isn't because modern doctrine proved too unreliant against guerilla tactics. It's because nobody knows who the enemy is. It has been explicitly stated in Gate: Thus the JSDF Fought There that the Imperial Empire cannot hope to achieve victory through direct confrontation. It is evident in the Vietnam War that no Vietnamese forces could ever hope of winning a battle against the US directly. So the only way to confront them is to harass them through the most unorthodox means ever. The most scary thing about assymetrical warfare is that no soldier will know who exactly their enemies are. She could be a little girl hurdling in some high story apartment with an AK-47 hidden. He could be an old man shopping some groceries with a bomb strapped beneath his basket. They could be a bunch of fighters hidden beneath thinly dug caves ready to spring out to ambush soldiers the moment their civilian informant told them so. That's why they lost the war. There is no concrete objective in those wars. The only winnable move is to win the hearts of the population - something that no armies have ever achieved thus far. 3. I don't see how a discussion on land-based asymmetrical warfare has anything to do with defining the roles of a battleship in naval warfare. If the lesson is supposed to be about stealth and ambush in naval combat, then the battleship is the worst vessel to conduct one. The battleship is so big and clunky it literally gives off a huge radar signature for everyone to see. The presence of a battleship in fact proves detrimental to whatever viable tactics the admiral could even think of, because suddenly the enemy knows where you are before you even start scouting for them. If the lesson is supposed to be how a battleship is supposed to be useful in unknown situations, then the question is: what unknown situations? - If a fleet is attacked by a underwater creature like a leviathan, they would have used depth charges and ASROCs to neutralise the threat. If a battleship's armour is ever used, it probably means the whole fleet has sunk. - If a fleet is attacked by some massive dragon, they would have spammed missiles and even cruise missiles before it even enters visual range. If a battleship's armour is ever used, it probably means the dragon has wrecked the whole fleet. - If a fleet is attacked by some spartial magic, the battleship and her fleet would probably sink unless somebody else took out that wizard from some other corners of the world. And it'd require special forces or a F-2 to do it anyway. - If a fleet is attacked by the flying battleship, then the obvious solution would be to spam more missiles BVR. Why on earth would the JMSDF allow that thing to enter visual range just to get blasted by its laser weaponry? - If a fleet is attacked by the magical moving naval fortress, then the solution would be to spam everything - bombs, missiles, torpedoes, everything BVR. They won't even get near the enemy fort to hypothetically allow them to use the big guns they have on them. - If a fleet is attacked by intercontinental missiles, then Kongo and Atago are enough to do the job. A battleship doesn't have the capability to intercept any of those missiles. If a battleship's armour is used, the whole fleet is probably dead.